Featured Tracks:

"Rescue, Mister"

Trust

"Capitol"

Trust

Shortly after the release of TRST—the debut LP from Canadian coldwavers Trust—Maya Postepski said her goodbyes, leaving Robert Alfons to go it alone while she refocused her energies on Toronto dream-poppers Austra. Postepski and Alfons shared both songwriting and vocal duties on TRST, making her exit not just sudden, but potentially drastic. Yet there's something strangely fitting about Alfons carrying on as a solo project: Trust, after all, are precisely the kind of band that seems to thrive on alienation and solitude. Even the clubbier tracks on TRST had a a dark, dissociative, alone-in-a-crowd feel, better suited for a 4 AM freakout in a windowless room than any kind of communal catharsis. Joyland, the Alfons-only Trust's second effort, is a couple notches sleeker than its predecessor, but that lurching, sweating-off-the-pancake-makeup smear of TRST continues unabated on the scowling, subterranean release. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Alfons makes a pretty good loner.

Opener "Slightly Floating" eases you into Joyland slowly, its twinkling keyboards and choral swirl getting you good and acclimated to the darkness ahead. By the time "Geryon" rolls around, you're in deep: the bass throbs, synths sputter and shriek, while Alfons' sleep-deprived, sin-soaked baritone implores you to do something you'll spend the next three days trying to forget. Foreboding four-on-the-floor bangers like "Geryon" are Joyland's stock-and-trade; it's a dance record for the club underneath the club, where the velvet rope's blood-spattered and the VIP section's a bathroom stall. Even when the tempos unclench, this queasy, addled vibe persists. Taken alone, the starry-eyed, breath-catching chorus of "Are We Arc?" would be plainly gorgeous. To get there, though, you'll have to wade through a good minute of Alfons' perilous mumble. Joyland never flinches; you can almost picture Alfons sizing you up with a glazed stare, making sure you're ready to see some things you can't easily unsee.

Whether left unadorned or taffy-pulled into the upper registers, Alfons' stern, self-serious vocal tone is given even more room to slither throughout Joyland. In his review of TRST, Larry Fitzmaurice compared Alfons to a "goth Eeyore"; point being, the guy's not exactly the type to light up a room. With Postepski gone, Alfons is responsible for every voice on Joyland, from the pip squeaking chorus of "Lost Souls/Eelings" to his gravelly, graven turn on "Icabod". As before, Alfons slathers his voice with effects, bending, folding, and reshaping syllables into not-always-comprehensible shapes. As with TRST, Alfons' pitch-shifted, disaffected voice—repulsive one minute, riveting the next—is certainly Trust's most distinguishing characteristic. But, on a 50 minute album like Joyland, these oft-garbled exhortations—coupled with Joyland's icy synths and weaponized rhythms—have a distancing effect.

Throughout Joyland, the dingy hues introduced on TRST have deepened; Alfons has somehow managed to open up more space in his sound without sacrificing that twitchy, walls-closing-in vibe. Songwise, though, Joyland's just not quite at the same level. The emotional range throughout Joyland is fairly narrow—you've got your dark greys, and your pitch blacks—and memorable hooks often seem to take a backseat to tone and texture. Verses often seem rushed, with Alfons barreling through in that stern monotone, only to come alive around the choruses. Joyland's surface pleasures—fizzling synths, dry-heave rhythms—often seem to take precedence over its songcraft: the moaning, rave-ready "Icabod" is a true monster, up there with anything on TRST, but the pulsing tempos of all but a couple of these songs often seem to blot out everything else around them, and the more patient numbers often feel a bit shapeless, little more than excuses to test out another new effect on Alfons' malleable voice. The oily, immersive Joyland's very nearly the equal of its predecessor. But with so many similarities—and so little growth—between the two records, it's a little like spending another night at the same club: once you've gotten the lay of the land, the thrills are never quite so thrilling.